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SUNDAY, MAY 18TH 2008
Here's what has been shakin' lately with the Crucial Blast camp:
Check out the May issue of the esteemed UK extreme music magazine Terrorizer (issue #170) for a big two-page article on Wildildlife...Joseph Stannard scrapes the inside of the band's collective skull for background on their psychedelic tuneage and assaultive live performances, and the band gets tagged as "the New Gods Of Cosmic American Metal". Pretty sweet! Wildildlife also swung by New York's legendary freeform station WFMU a few weeks ago on the last leg of their latest US tour, and performed live on Brian Turner's show. You can head over to http://wfmu.org/playlists/shows/26856 to download the Wildildlife set...there is also some live video footage from the set as well.
Microwaves are slowly getting back in action after some lineup flux last year. John Roman from the 'Waves dropped me a line this week and said that they are getting their new gear situation in order, which is going to allow the band to carry on as a duo sans bassist, but the way John is tellin' it, the new version of Microwaves is going to sound even sicker than before. Per John, "I really don't know of many (or any?) others that are taking our current approach."
At the moment, Microwaves have one show scheduled for this summer, August 1st to be precise, at the Stone in New York City for a show being curated by Trevor Dunn (Electric Masada, Fantômas, Fantômas Melvins Big Band, Mr. Bungle, Trevor Dunn's Trio-Convulsant). Some more nomadic destruction is being planned, but I don't have the scoop on all of that yet...we'll keep you posted, as usual.
UK whitenoise rockers Geisha have some shows coming up this week in the UK: Monday, May 19th @ The Brickyard, Carlisle, UK...Tuesday May 20th @ Westport Bar, Dundee, Scotland...Wednesday May 21st @ The Admiral, Glasgow, Scotland...Thursday May 22nd @ The Red House, Sheffield, and
Friday May 23rd @ Secret Location (drop the band a line through their MySpace page for details) in Leeds. We also have a bunch of updated tour dates for Totimoshi, Wildildlife, Black Elk, Monarch, and Behold...The Arctopus on the TOURS page.
AVAILABLE NOW: TREES Lights Bane
The debut album from the Portland quartet Trees delivers two epic tracks of monolithic, blackened doom metal with a twisted, noise-damaged approach and a dank basement vibe. Trees craft glacial abstract riffs and rivers of ashen amplifier goo that fans of feedback-laden heaviosity will find highly satisfying, a kind of grinding, slow-motion black hole psychedelia that has a similiar hypnotic death-ritual quality as artists like Bloody Panda and Khanate, but with their own unique trance state of swirling guitar textures, horrific jet black dronescapes and ghoulish, excoriating vocals. Features members of the PDX psych-sludge outfit Tecumseh (Important Records). This CD edition of the TREE's debut comes in a Stoughton printed 4-panel gatefold case. We will also be carrying the limited edition (500 copies) vinyl version that is coming out on 20 Buck Spin.
***While supplies last, we'll be including an 11" x 17" Trees poster with CD orders, which features Neri's eerie artwork that appears on the cover of Lights Bane***.
::Click here for more information and online ordering::.
MP3 TRACK EXCERPTS FROM Light's Bane:
Track 1: "Nothing" ::MP3 EXCERPT::
Track 2: "BLack" ::MP3 EXCERPT::
AVAILABLE NOW: GNAW THEIR TONGUES An Epiphanic Vomiting Of Blood
Gnaw Their Tongues, an enigmatic project from the Netherlands that has wowed fans of messed-up heaviosity with the phenomenal Reeked, Pained and Shuddering CD that was released on Paradigms along with a host of super-limited CDR and cassette releases, is joining the Crucial Blast roster for the CD release of the new full length An Epiphanic Vomiting Of Blood, which was released as a limited edition vinyl release at the beginning of 2008 on Burning World Records. This undefinable mass of black amorphic horror is one of the most intense listens we've engaged in recently, a nihilistic pit of howling orchestral strings and blackened abstract doom, operatic female voices plunging into a fetid sewer of filth and blackness, equal parts avant black metal and splattered sludge and symphonic horror movie score. An overwhelming deathscape scrawled in jagged figures across pieces like "My body is not a vessel, nor a temple. It's a repulsive pile of sickness" or "Sawn asunder and left for the beasts", and flecked with moments of unbelievably crushing beauty that may surprise fans of Gnaw Their Tongue's previous work.
::Click here for more information and online ordering::.
MP3 TRACK EXCERPTS FROM AN EPIPHANIC VOMITING OF BLOOD:
Track 1: "My body is not a vessel, nor a temple. it's a repulsive pile of sickness" ::MP3 EXCERPT::
Track 2: "Teeth that leer like open graves" ::MP3 EXCERPT::
TRack 3: "Sawn asunder and left for the beasts" ::MP3 EXCERPT::
Nadja's Desire In Uneasiness now available .
Following a wave of recent reissues and re-recorded versions of older CD-R titles, Desire In Uneasiness is an album of all new material from the acclaimed Canadian dreamsludge weavers Nadja. Five colossal jams of eternally-fuzzy, ethereal dirge that are powered by the interlocking bass guitars of Leah Buckareff and Aidan Baker, who set loose a wave of monstrous grinding bass riffs amidst a fog of beautiful, swirling electronic effects. Desire also marks the first Nadja album to feature a live drummer in place of the drum machine programming that has driven the band's previous recordings, and the difference in the band's sound is apparent from the first crushing beats of album opener 'Disambiguation'. The organic drumming here takes Nadja's music into new realms of spacious jazzy exploration, dubby rhythms and cavernous psychedelia, while also delivering some of the band's most grooving, crushing hypno-bliss yet.
Desire also stands out from the rest of the Nadja catalog for it's bizarre artwork that Aidan commisioned from his friend The Reverend Aitor. Aitor's bright, bold lines and textured magic marker artwork gives the gatefold jacket we've presented this disc in the look of a twisted children's book on acid, with weird images of chickens, trees growing through chairs, and more. The package is a sturdy 4-panel gatefold jacket printed by Stoughton, and it looks killer.
::Click here for more information and online ordering::.
New WILDILDLIFE "Mutant Crucifixion" shirt available now!
We now have this new exclusive shirt design for WILDILDLIFE, we're calling it "Mutant Crucifixion" and these look AWESOME, with a huge front print with three-color artwork. You need to go over to the Shirts page to take a look at a more detailed image for the garments so that you can see the artwork in full - this is the coolest looking print that we've put together yet for a Crucial Blast shirt. We have this new design available on both black and ash colored garments in standard sizes, they are in stock and shipping now.
Click Here: SHIRTS for details and ordering information.
HEDORAH self titled collection out now from the Crucial Bliss series.
I've been a fan of Wilt ever since Matt Gibney (RIP) sent me a copy of the The Black Box Aesthetic: Zeitgeist 1 CD that he had released on his label The Rectrix. The combination of dark ambience, organic sounds, and industrial creep that Wilt delivered on that (and other early albums) had me captivated, but I lost track of the project for a few years as the labels that were releasing Wilt's albums were largely off of my radar. It wasn't until late last year that I rediscovered Wilt after member James Keeler sent me a bunch of his recent releases to check out for Crucial Blast. Not only did I flip out over the newer Wilt stuff that came in the package, which now had a tactile metallic heaviness in addition to the always present waves of black sound, but I was also introduced to a band called Hedorah that was on a split cassette that James included a copy of. The Hedorah tape (a split with The Fortieth Day) felt like a boot to the skull when I popped it into the office stereo, an oozing syrup-blast of blackened doom metal delivered over sickening downtuned guitar riffs that seemed to drift in and out of phase, smears of filthy electronic noise, and crushing monotonous drum machine beats. Not one ray of light, nor ounce of melody is anywhere to be found. Just plodding, utterly hypnotic, nauseatingly crushing industrial doom. That tape immediately became one of my favorite items that James sent, and after writing him back to ask what the deal was with this band Hedorah, it turned out that the band is actually the "doom metal" alter-ego of Wilt, with both James Keeler and Dan Hall of Wilt making up the band. It also turned out that they had some surplus recordings that they were looking for a home for, and in an instant this collection of Hedorah recordings was birthed, screaming and covered in black oil into this world.
Taking it's name from the aerial pollution god that faced off against Godzilla in the Japanese psychedelic kaiju classic Godzilla vs. Hedorah (1971), Hedorah is fully documented on this sort-run disc that combines the track "From Beyond" from the split cassette with The Fortieth Day, "Planet Of Doom" from the Dr. Who Vs The Noise compilation, and five unreleased tracks. Hedorah proves to be a multi-tentacled beast: "Crystal Smoke" evokes a smog-ridden wasteland laced with acid-rock guitar soloing, pummeling industrial bass, and trance inducing beats, and ends up as some kind of grim krautrock jam. "Self Medicated" emits looping dialogue and whirring drones over monstrous throat chanting. "Hyperbolean" combines terrifying screams converted to echo-chamber hiss and overdriven, pummeling metal riffage thrust so far into the red that it sounds like there are flaps of speaker material smacking up against yer eardrums. The twenty-minute "Black Walls" is the apex of distortion though. That final track starts off as a sheet of obsidian ambience, a shimmering drone streaked by whirring noises, but then the riff appears, a massive three-chord doom dirge looming over the horizon, massively distorted and plodding, a hateful obelisk of fuzz lumbering through the increasingly violent blasts of feedback and distorted vocal noise that's shot across the soundfield. Ominous synth melodies and dank cave ambience appear later on, but become devoured by vicious feedback lashings a la Prurient and the return of that bottomless crushing doom dirge. Heavy is an understatement.
Packaged in our signature 3-panel Crucial Bliss glossy sleeve, which has been designed by Lord Keeler himself. The disc is attached to the inside of the jacket on a plastic hub, and there is also a small insert card included in the package. Released in an edition of 250 copies.
Click Here: HEDORAH Collection CDR for details and ordering information for this disc.
FISTULA Inverted Black Star and Lessons In Lamentation Crucial Bliss discs available now.
Every time I get something new from Fistula, by the time that I reach the end of the CD, or 7", or whatever, I make up my mind that there's no way that this band can get any goddamn heavier. This ongoing habit of laying down sonic ultimatums in my relationship to Fistula's music has been going on for what I guess has been seven years now, ever since I first picked up their Hymns Of Slumber CD on Shifty Records. Man, I felt like someone was stacking cinderblocks on my head the first time that I spun Hymns. And each subsequent release from the Ohio group (which over the years has oscillated between various permutations of the same lineup, always returning to the core of guitarist Corey Bing, bassist Bahb Branca, and guitarist Scott Stearns) just keeps cranking the frustrated, ultra-pissed-off negativism, mutant crossover thrash riffs, gooey doom tempos, feedback, narcotics, trailer park satanism and absolutely skull-splintering slow-motion mosh riffs even further. If you've never heard 'em, imagine an unholy union between Japanese doomlords Corrupted and the scathing thrash of The Accused colliding together into a mutant form of sludgy, thuggish doomthrash and left to stew in an oily vat of Gummo-esque atmosphere. God damn, I love Fistula.
But this, this is something different. Different at least from any of the other Fistula records. At some point last year, the members of Fistula met up with another Ohioan, Steve Makita from the midwest power-violence legends Apartment 213, midwest power-tool noise legends Lockweld, and current second throat for Agoraphobic Nosebleed. At some point, both of these parties decided that joining forces would be a good move and had Makita lug over his toolbox to the Fistula practice space and drag out some of his most lethal circuit-shredders, keyboards and power tools. The end result are two new discs, Lessons In Lamentation and Inverted Black Star, each one possessed by a single hour-plus track of Fistula with Steve Makita conjuring fucking HUGUNGOUS slabs of apocalyptic free-metal. And it's Fistula's most abstract, demonic music ever, a charred mess of harsh electronic skree and gut-rumbling noise and unholy doom metal.
Each of these two discs is available in an edition of 300 copies each, presented in the signature Crucial Bliss three-panel sleeve with artwork from Ralf Burkart, the disc itself attached to the sleeve on a plastic nub.
Click here: FISTULA Inverted Black Star for details and ordering information for this disc.
Click here: FISTULA Lessons In Lamentation for details and ordering information for this disc.
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WEBSTORE UPDATE: SUNDAY, MAY 18TH 2008
Here we are, back again after another extended delay, but the new arrivals list this week is bigger than ever...as it should be, seeing as how it's been another month and a half since the last Crucial Blast store update! We've been swamped with working on the new webstore that is even closer to completion right now, and hopefully that'll be getting launched in the next month!
The featured release for this week is the second album from Japan's BIRUSHANAH, released here in the US through Level Plane, and it's a massive two-track slab of mutant ethno-sludge that I can only compare to a twisted fusion of Zeni Geva, traditional Japanese classical, and Corrupted. Uber-angular riffs that defy physics lumber over a multi-percussionist ensemble that pairs up some slamming metal drumming with the pound and clamor of oil drums and metal percussion, and the tandem Industrial pummel that this backline unleashes is INSANELY HEAVY. This album is amazing!
We also have BIRUSHANAH's Touta CD from a couple of years ago, and it's equally as crushing and freaked out sounding; while we were raiding S.M.D. Records for more Japanese mutant metal, we found out about the duo RYOKUCHI, whose Shinsho CD combines traditional Japanese instruments with a weird kind of ultraheavy Godflesh-meets-mathprog assault. If you dig Birushanah's stuff, you seriously need to investigate RYOKUCHI and anything else connected to the S.M.D. label.
Not one, but THREE Skullflower CDs in stock this week! Along with Skullflower's 2003 return Exquisite Fucking Boredom that was recently repressed and made available again from Tumult, we have the brand new, super-limited Desire For A Holy War CD from Utech that pairs up Matt Bower's latest blast of blackened psychedelic guitar noise with the terrific artwork of Stephen Kasner, AND a live album from Skullflower called Pure Imperial Reform that features Bower teaming up with new 'Flower member Lee Stokoe (CULVER) and performing live in Belgium - this is easily one of the most caustic, skull-crushing pure noise sets that Skullflower has ever bestowed upon us!
Lots of other new stuff in: the latest album from Boston's guitar-and-drums duo 5IVE, laying another awesome batch of riff-heavy psych metal jams; the crucial double-disc hardkore jazz-punk anthology from Swiss extreme skronk legends 16-17; a collection of older EP's gathered together on one full length disc from Aussie kraut-psych-metallers AHKMED; BLASPHEMIA CASUALIS' one and only album of sample-collage grindnoise avant splatter The Ring Of The Nibelungen; some crushing new harsh noise-walls from blackened deathnoise demons BT. HN. and the firearm-toting hatescape of Taint side project MANIA; two new CDs of scorching psychedelic raga-doom-folk Appalachia from CROW TONGUE; Darsombra's awesome new album of deep-void kosmiche drone and proggy Klaus Schulze/Ash Ra/Goblinesque drift; a new concert/art film DVD from the Mr. Bungle-connected prog band Estradasphere; a recently released split CDR featuring our favorite orchestral blackdoom soundtrack project GNAW THEIR TONGUES, sharing a disc with the bizarre bedroom Industrial slowcore and horror synthesizers of SICK TO THE BACK TEETH; and 20 Buck Spin's new full length from HUMANFLY, who deliver some epic Pink Floyd-influenced dirge metal.
Some of the cool new vinyl releases and reissues that we have in: the deluxe gatefold double LP version of COFFINS' Mortuary In Darkness; a super limited LP and 7" set from drum machine grinders AGORAPHOBIC NOSEBLEED classic Honky Reduction that comes with the bonus The Glue That Binds Us 7" released by the small German label R.S.R.; the LP/CD for INDRICOTHERE, a solo project from Colin Marston of BEHOLD...THE ARCTOPUS that has Colin invoking hypertechnical death metal infused with massive melodic passages that remind me of the Sigur Ros-style parts from Colin's old band INFIDEL?/CASTRO!. Awesome!
Head over to the Crucial Blast Webstore to check out all of the new stuff.
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